Senate Democrats are wrapping up their tenure in the majority by reigniting debate on some of the former President 's most controversial policies with a long-delayed report on the use of torture - `` enhanced interrogation techniques '' - by the U.S. government .

Six years into the Barack Obama 's presidency , the Senate Intelligence Committee early next week is expected to release findings from its $ 50 million investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency 's use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques on detainees in the years following the Sept. 11 , 2001 terrorist attacks .

Among the questions the report tackles : Did three detainees tortured under the program provide information that helped identify a courier who led the U.S. to find Osama bin Laden ?

The answer to that question will likely be different based on already hardened points of view even after the Senate report is released . The CIA believes the interrogations of three men : Khalid Sheikh Mohammed , Ammar al-Baluchi , and Hassan Ghul provided key information that led to bin Laden .

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More than a hundred detainees went through the CIA 's detention program , and about a third were subjected to `` enhanced interrogation techniques , '' which included waterboarding , exposure to cold temperatures , slapping and sleep deprivation . Three were waterboarded , which is considered the harshest of the techniques .

The agency now disavows the program as a mistake that it wo n't repeat .

Related : `` We tortured some folks , says President Obama ''

But they are also trying to walk a fine line , by sticking to claims that valuable intelligence on al Qaeda and in the hunt for Osama bin Laden emerged from the harsh interrogations of detainees .

CNN 's Candy Crowley asked former President George W. Bush about the report in an interview set to air on State of the Union Sunday .

`` I 'll tell you this , '' Bush said after clarifying that he had n't read the Senate report yet . `` We 're fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf . These are patriots . And whatever the report says , if it diminishes their contributions to our country it is way off base . I knew the directors , the deputy directors , I knew a lot of the operators . These are good people . Really good people . And we 're lucky as a nation to have them . ''

Officials briefed on the report say it will provide ugly new details on the CIA program , including specifics on detainee deaths and a portrayal of a haphazardly assembled and poorly managed program . The report will detail 20 findings , plus 20 case studies that the Senate Democrats say illustrate CIA 's misrepresentations about the program . The Osama bin Laden hunt is one of the 20 case studies .

Countries that cooperated with the CIA , hosting black site prisons and assisting in transferring detainees , will be identified only obliquely and not by name . CIA employees , referred to by pseudonyms in the report , wo n't be identified ; the CIA pushed for the pseudonyms to be redacted because other information in the report could be used to determine who they are .

The Senate report was conceived initially as a bipartisan review of the CIA program , though Republicans senators pulled support from the investigation soon after it began . Its findings likely will end up being seen through the prism of the deeply-partisan divide over the Bush-era counter-terrorism tactics and whether they actually produced intelligence to keep the nation safe .

The investigation produced a report that is more than 6,000 pages . But only the 480-page executive summary is being released , following months of negotiations between the Senate and the White House over redactions .

According to an administration official , 93 % of the report is unredacted . `` There 's going to be nothing lost in this narrative , '' the official added .

There also will be a separate rebuttal by the committee 's Republicans . And the CIA will publish its own study of the program .

Conspicuously absent from the Senate report is any examination of the role of high-level officials in the Bush White House who authorized the CIA program and who urged that more aggressive tactics be used . That omission appears to lay blame for the program 's excesses solely on the CIA , when top Bush officials ordered the agency to come up with the detention and interrogation program . A Senate aide said the purpose of the report was n't to point fingers at the Bush administration , but to examine the program itself .

The central conclusion by the Democratic-led Senate report , according to people briefed on the investigation , is that CIA employees exceeded the guidelines set by Justice Department memos that authorized the use and that the agency misrepresented to Congress and the White House what it was doing .

The report has also opened a rare public rift between the current White House and some Democrats on Capitol Hill . Sen. Dianne Feinstein , who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee and is usually a defender of the CIA , has unleashed stinging criticism of the agency after what she said was a series of cover-ups including the destruction of interrogation tapes . `` The interrogations and the conditions of confinement at the CIA detention sites were far different and far more harsh than the way the CIA had described them to us , '' Feinstein said on the Senate floor in March .

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Her remarks came during a spat with the CIA . Feinstein was angry at the discovery that CIA employees had conducted searches of computers used by Senate staffers at a CIA facility to conduct their investigation . The CIA in turn accused Senate staffers of hacking into CIA computers to obtain documents they were n't entitled to.â $ `

In a phone call Friday , Secretary of State John Kerry asked Feinstein to consider the broader implications of the timing of the report 's release , said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki .

`` A lot is going on in the world , and he wanted to make sure that foreign policy implications were being appropriately factored into timing , '' Psaki said . `` These include our ongoing efforts against ISIL and the safety of Americans being held hostage around the world . ''

During the call , Kerry made it clear `` that the timing is of course her choice , '' Psaki said .

Feinstein also claimed some of the report 's findings challenge the `` societal and constitutional '' values of America .

`` We have to get this report out , '' Feinstein told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Sunday . `` Anybody who reads this is going to never let this happen again . ''

Did torture work ?

Ali Soufan , a former FBI agent , who was one of the bureau 's top al Qaeda experts , says the torture `` did n't work . '' In an opinion article published in the New York Times last year , Soufan says `` torture led us away from Bin Laden . After -LSB- Khalid Sheikh -RSB- Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times , he actually played down the importance of the courier who ultimately led us to Bin Laden . ''

John Rizzo , who was the CIA 's acting general counsel during the period , is convinced the program helped find bin Laden and that it protected the nation . `` I believed the program yielded valuable intelligence and I continue to believe this , '' he told CNN in an interview earlier this year .

Also in dispute -- and some say unknowable -- is whether other methods could have produced the same or better information than what the CIA program produced .

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have mixed views on whether any intelligence information still in use by intelligence analysts came from the program . Some officials say that because of the way intelligence is gathered , it 's impossible to determine whether strands of intelligence , used to keep tabs on al Qaeda terrorists , came from the now-banned interrogations . Others say that the FBI and CIA already had detailed knowledge of al Qaeda and that the program simply duplicated information already in the hands of intelligence analysts .

For some Republicans and CIA supporters , there 's still a dispute about whether techniques like waterboarding , used on three detainees , constitutes torture .

The Justice Department twice has investigated the conduct of CIA employees involved in the program and decided not to bring charges .

President Obama an early critic of the program as senator , has tried to be more even-handed since taking office . `` We tortured some folks , '' the president said in August , adding that there was a need to recall the context of the era , including the fear of follow-up attacks . `` In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 , we did some things that were wrong â $ '' we did a whole lot of things that were right , but we did some things that were contrary to our values ... I understand why it happened . It 's important when we look back to recall how afraid people were . ''

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Senate Democrats are set to release a long-delayed and much-anticipated review of American interrogation techniques

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The report will tackle the question of whether torture helped gain intelligence

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Republicans have pulled support from the report and will offer their own rebuttal